Last month, OWC Founder and CEO Larry O’Connor penned an editorial discussing Apple’s treatment of Pro users, planned obsolescence and the value of Macs over time. You can find the entire article here.

The OWC CEO recently joined media and content creator Marcelo Lewin of Digimedia Pros to dive even deeper into the topic and address the question: Has Apple abandoned the creative community?

During the discussion, the two examine the evidence, including the current hardware and software lineups, and also try to predict what the future might bring. According to Lewin, “the episode is dedicated to all Mac creative professionals that want to stick with Apple, but are finding it hard to justify the performance to cost ratio of owning a Mac today.”

Check out the full conversation below and visit MacSales.com to get the best selection of Mac Pro upgrades including memory and SSDs for your professional workflow.

Apple has failed the Pro-end user at epic levels. They are so lost without Steve Jobs. Everything about them has become about the “bling.” They are too stubborn to admit they failed with these pro-Crushing Trashcans. So they keep pushing the same crappy product for 3 years running… And they still don’t out perform most 2012 Towers. When they told the pro world to suck off and just take a step backwards with hardware like most of us have invested thousands of dollars in… we should have counted our losses back then and moved on. The Pro still needs PCI slots… the Pro does not want wires and external devices all over the place.. the Pro does not want to spend 4 times as much to get less. WAKE THE BLANK UP APPLE!! Make a Pro-end tower.

Been a loyal Apple desktop buyer since 1987. I now need to replace my 2010 Mac Pro Tower to handle serious 3D graphics and animation. I’ve held onto this sluggish machine two years longer than I wanted to because I assumed Apple had a replacement coming. I can wait no longer. Apple clearly doesn’t give a damn about professionals who want monitor and keyboard choice from a blazing fast system (yeah, screw you iMacs and laptops). My disgust toward Apple, now just a gadget company, has pushed me toward customized PC towers. The arrogance of Apple’s number crunchers, trying to attract fickle phone buyers in lieu of loyal professionals, has soured me on ALL Apple products, and I suspect I am not alone in that dismay. My bet is Apple stock will crash within 15 months and the clerks in charge will have none to blame but themselves, with Tim Cook being Clerk #1.

Apple absolutely has abandoned the pro user. It’s really sad how they’ve squandered their earned edge in the marketplace. Is there anything they make anymore that isn’t backwards or problematic? Their so-called pro laptops have no ethernet jack, no self-servicable memory, no optical media and no removable battery. Their so-called pro desktop machines that have almost no option for upgrades or expandability and are completely impractical. Their desktop machines don’t have optical drives, can’t have memory swapped out and have speakers that sound worse than the previous generations, and *have no ability to natively get audio into them*. And now we have phones that don’t have a universal native way to get audio OUT of them either… because of “courage”? I wouldn’t call any of what they’ve been up to these last few years “courage”. It’s crazy. What a mess they are today. I’ve been planning my next purchase, figuring out what I’ll need and what will work best to get the job done: it’s not a Mac, and that’s not my fault. They kicked me off phones with the headphone jack issue (not gonna buy one), they have made my laptop life more complicated for audio (no audio in), and now they are kicking me off desktops.

We waited and waited, but this year, with not even a hint of a new pro release date, myself and everyone in our little motion graphics community switched to PC. It was a hard decision and a sad day when I had to make the switch. But the power in my new PC, for $3500, is the equivalent of a trashcan that would come in at about $10,000. Apple has abandoned us to design watchbands. RIP Steve Jobs.

Lets face it they don`t care. If they really did they would at least have communication with the pro market and let us know what is going on and what is coming. If you need the power you can buy a system from a custom maker like Boxx or Puget Systems that will destroy a Mac Pro. And those have been out for a while now. I`ve been checking into options. And they offer so many options when building. Think about it, if you use a Mac they don`t have competition. We use what they give us which is just stupid. I need a new machine right now but I will not give them money for 3 year old hardware. Would you buy a 2013 car at a dealer who was selling it as brand new at 2013 price? Three years with not a comment as to what they are up to. These little custom makers can offer the latest stuff but Apple can`t. It is a sad joke now. I will wait until the end of this year and then if they don`t offer what I need I`m done. The apps I use will work the same on Windows so I will get used to it.

I just bought a Supermicro running Windows for my colorist business and I can tell you as a long time Apple user that they gave up on pros a long time ago.I’m almost embarrassed to admit I stuck it out this long. Sad thing is they are so capable of a kick-ass machine.

I use a Macbook Pro for 3D modeling work, audio and video editing, and 3D game design. Apple is letting their laptops lag behind in graphics performance and (IMO) keyboard quality compared to what I see in the Windows market. Their display quality is still superb, though.

I’d be very, very happy if Apple would license OSX to run in a virtual machine, or natively on other hardware. I am a Linux professional but like OSX way better than Windows for a variety of reasons. Give me a native Linux boot on a high-end CPU/GPU pairing with a retina-grade display, and I’ll cheerfully pay Apple for the right to run OSX in VMware or KVM.

Wonder if this might draw Apple’s attention to the dissatisfaction of Pro users: OWC prepare a petition to Apple demanding upgrading and currency of Mac Pros and distribute it to its customer base for signatures. Better still if KelbyOne—with their addresses of Photoshop users—would provide these addresses for petition signers.

Apple has really screwed the pooch with the hardware (making much of it non-expandable and non-customizable as a function of time, and less of a performer) as well as their professional software feature removal to communize it to make it compatible with their phone/tablet platform. I hate what they have done to both.

I have also used macs since the XL days (and the apple III before that!). Often I kept older Macs long past their ‘use by date’ in order to continue using software that either was not updated or the had become cost prohibitive. Love my mac mini (the last version that was user upgradeable) and although I like the ‘look’ of the newer machines I wonder what will happen if the ram dies (been there done that!), battery no longer holds a charge or the drive dies. I feel that,like the current crop of Macs, I am a disposable commodity.

Sh, couldn’t have said it better, but to add: my iPhone’s last a year, even with fancy cases, and otherwise mint condition. I have seen more graphics related issues in the last five years on their laptops than the previous 20 years combined, you can build a desktop that matches the Mac Pro in performance internally for half or less the price, the last Mac mini is slower than one before, and address book and calendar still have years old bugs… Lastly now random wifi failures are becoming the trend on their laptops. As a tech consultant my confidence in new machine recommendations has become diminished as a result of Apples recent history with its machines. Phone support regularly flat out lies or doesn’t have an answer and the geniuses are outright antagonizing on a regular basis in response to any evidence of technical knowledge on the part of the user.

Yea, My mid 2010 MacBook Pro is most likely on it’s final year as it probably won’t be supported by the next MacOS after Sierra (which I’m running now in Beta on one of the disks on my Data Doubler (lifesaver) Upgraded Ram (lifesaver) looking to the new models not being able to upgrade is reminding me of the B.S. Microsoft pulls which is why I switched years back. Also, being retired and on Social Security buying a new one isn’t feasible especially if it can’t be upgraded to survive as ling as this one has.

I’ve been using Apple since the the 1st Mac SE, but over time it has become very clear that, for Apple, making ever more money trumps lasting quality. I like my 5K IMac, but I keep looking at the no-longer-upgradeable Silver Mac Pro next to it, and I know my Mac loyalty has died.

I agree Bert. I have 2 MacBook Pro’s (One a bit older than the other) but I look at a once beast of a machine my no-longer-upgradeable Silver Mac Pro and wonder why???? I love this machine in it’s day… Still do what I can with it but one day the plug will have to be pulled!

I agree, as well. I’ve been buying Apple from nearly the beginning, with an Apple Iic, Mac 512K Enhanced and many others, including MacBook Pros for all of my college-bound children. Their decision to make the MacBook Pros not upgradeable is a poor business decision. Climbing up the memory ladder, hard drive capacity and, now, adding SSD’s, as you can afford it has been the hallmark of a “power user”. I understand that Apple probably wants you to progressively buy more laptops, but who can afford a new one every year or two? I’ve lusted for a Mac Pro but have never been able to substantiate the cost. I’m good on paying a bit of a premium for my Apple machines, but if they block the ability to upgrade, they may have lost me as a customer. I’ve used them for professional graphics production, home music studio, gaming (more when I was younger-remember Myst?) and general use. I really don’t want to go Windows, but what was Apple thinking?

As a professional wildlife photographer I feel very abandoned by Apple !! I have used Aperture for over a decade now and it’s a wonderful application and a DAM for a pro photographer ! I rarely need to use another application. “Photos” is a piece of crap !, made for the many tablet and phone users and Apple’s profitability. I have not found another application to my liking. I do not think I would buy a new MacBook Pro even if one becomes available. An iPad Pro is not “Pro” worthy! I do not like Adobe’s subscription model either – it seems like everybody wants a piece of you every month !!

Check out Capture One. I too was an avid fan of Aperture and used it exclusively for my photo management and RAW conversion. I did a side-by-side comparison of RAW conversion between Capture One and Lightroom and Capture One was the winner hands down. The file management is similar to Aperture as are many of the adjustments – however, there is a steeper learning curve than I expected.

I loved the old cheese graders as they where rock solid machines and very easy to upgrade. The new units are cool and run much cooler but priced way to high for such a smaller device even though they are packed full of great reliable equipment. A Super Spec out iMac Retina display with the 4 gig video card can do most of what any pro wants the slightly oder iMac you could daisy chain which was cool. I would love to see mac re-support the Education community once again and Pro community like they use too… I agree with Luis the iOS BS on both Android and iOS for iPhone/iPad is not the way to push the Pro market that is for sure.

I should add before I even saw the Mac battle tech spec up top, I ordered the new iMac Retina display i7 with the 4gig video card! Unpacking it as I write this! I eventually will go back to a Mac Pro when it surpasses the iMac, which for me will be in a few years after this purchase! LOL

I think they are dropping the Mac line up slowly and putting all their efforts to iOS, don’t abandoned the professionals, they’re trying to migrate professionals to iPads.
For me this sucks, because I love the Mac, and don’t like iOS for work, even for web browsing don’t like this mobile, android or iOS I hate them.

I don’t think they’ve abandoned the professionals, but are trying to do what they can considering what has been delayed by Intel.

One thing to note, the newest line of iMacs have P3 color gamut in the monitors, which caters to professionals as that is the color gamut currently in use in digital movie theaters, so, FinalCut Pro and iMovie users can get a good idea of how their movies will look, as far as color goes, in the movie theaters. Now we just need a new free standing monitor based on these.

I’m sure there will be some kind of update to the Mac Pro as soon as Intel makes things available, however, as I understand it, TB3 is delayed, so, a monitor as described above would have to have it’s own graphics hardware driver built-in, just as they have done for the iMacs. Hopefully this is in the works.

They missed the boat by not:
• Jumping on the intel “HEDT” platform
• Providing a serious gpu (cto) with ‘CUDA” support
• No proper pcie slots.
Pushing a lot of long term Apple fanatics to ‘other’ solutions.

it is not a ‘big’ market. But yes, for creating video content, CAD, and creative work in general requires a workstation. You are able to make do on a laptop, or a laptop with a monitor attached.
However if you are working in the Adobe suite, or using 3d rendering apps like C4D, you will need more sustained horsepower than a laptop can give you.
Apple has tried to foist the iMac on us as the ‘videographer’ solution. While it is more affordable than a Mac Pro, the form factor is not conducive to heat exchange. This makes it problematic to do long renders. Or even just preview various After Effects compositions.
Also, most people in film and video prefer to work on at least 2 monitors.

I tend to blame Sir Ives, a vain little artist obsessed with artsy babble. He is clearly not in touch with genuine, working creatives.

It came to me recently that, as a Creative Cloud user, switching platforms would be easy. The apps run the same. The documents would transfer over without a hitch. Would other apps matter? No, I don’t use that many. I could easy switch to a different browser and mail program.

Apple should also realize that the macOS v. Windows gap is far smaller than it was with Vista.

That is so not true. Steve Jobs had already changed the business model core to be on consumer products, not professional, starting with the iPods & iTunes music downloads, then, at some point before the iPhone, changed the company name from Apple Computer Inc., to Apple Inc. That has nothing to do with anyone’s personal agenda.

that is a truly ignorant comment. Apple for quite a while has made most of it’s money on mobile, apps and downloads. Computer sales have been leveling off for years now. Regardless, there is no liberal or conservative way to run a company. There is a profitable and unprofitable way. Have you checked Apple’s profitability lately?
All you have done here is show yourself to have your own agenda, which is labeling anyone as ‘librul’ whom you do not like.

I, too, wish Tim Cook would devote his time and energy to running Apple and improving the whole ecosystem. If he wants to be a politician or a priest, that’s his choice, but currently he is the CEO of Apple and needs to focus on that or else change careers. There is a rumbling in the Mac community that he needs to address.

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